241. Coworking Q&As: JV’s for Cafes, Managing Shared Memberships, Coworking Social Media Accounts to Follow

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241. Coworking Q&As: JV’s for Cafes, Managing Shared Memberships, Coworking Social Media Accounts to Follow

00:00:01 Welcome to the Everything Coworking podcast, where you learn what you need to know about how the world wants to work. And now your host coworking space owner and trend expert, Jamie Russo Hey there, this is Jamie Russo host of the Everything Coworking podcast. This is our week where we answer some questions from our Facebook group. If you are not in the Facebook group,

00:00:40 you should join us. I also have a love, hate relationship with Facebook. So I struggle with getting in there, but it is a really active community. We have almost 2000 people in the group. And if you've ever tried to start a Facebook group, I was just thinking about this. Actually it takes time to grow a community. So if you've tried this for your space and you're like,

00:01:01 oh, these groups don't work or slack doesn't work, or it takes a lot of people to get into a group for it to feel active because most people just kind of watch. They don't actively engage. That's totally fine. All of you who don't actively engage. So it's like an 80 20 rule. And so you need enough people that the 20% that are actually participating are meaningful.

00:01:23 And we definitely have gotten to that point in our Facebook group. We've also gotten to that point with our slack group, for our community managers. We're so grateful for that group. They are super active and super engaged. So we are going to flip over to the Facebook group and answer some questions. So here we go. The first one is posted by Jason Fry.

00:01:48 So Jason Fry has a 7,500 square foot space. I assume it's square feet and not square meters in Sheffield, United Kingdom, above a bar restaurant. And I love the idea of getting the space downstairs too, but I've never run a cafe restaurant or bar, and I don't want to diversify fully into that. Are there any good suggestions for a joint venture whereby our clients get benefit,

00:02:14 but someone else runs it or any good ideas? Really? So it's Jason. So Jason, thank you for posting. We have 11 comments on this post with some folks who have experience doing exactly this and some great ideas. So I love this question for a couple of reasons. One, it comes up often. I have folks in my Coworking Startup School who are working on similar models.

00:02:39 We have one who's opening, a co-working space, co-working space and cafe. The cafe is on one side co-working space party, the front work in the back kind of model, and some other folks working on similar approaches. So this is something that comes up for a lot of folks in terms of offering amenities to their members and potentially diversifying revenue. The other reason I like this is because I think it's a really compelling model today because I'm struggling with this idea.

00:03:12 And actually then right from upsweep brought this up to me one day, he said, you know, it used to be that Coworking was like the anti Office, but now it is the office. And so is like, is it still the place people want to go to? It depends on what type of work you need to get done. But I have this theory that we're going to see a movement towards spaces that are less like corporate feeling and more blended with work and life.

00:03:46 And a lot of co-working spaces already go in that direction. Lots of soft seating, big kitchen. I think we're going to go even further because so I, a couple of examples we've had on the podcast, Jim Hyde is in Healdsburg. His space in the front has this awesome lounge area with a fireplace. And if you have a membership, Healdsburg is a big wine area in California,

00:04:12 Northern California. If you have a membership there, you can bring in a bottle of wine and sit in front of the fireplace and drink your bottle of wine with your friends. How awesome is that? The, what was my other exempt? Oh, Tessa from quench club. She was on many episodes ago now, but she, hers is basically like a work club,

00:04:35 right? So it's not a place you go just to have sort of corporate workspace, but you can do a lot of different things there. They have a general store on the first floor. They're really integrating work and life more than ever before. And so I love this thinking about how do I open next to something that's compelling like that, or partner to get something like that.

00:05:00 So one of the respondents is Jennifer Tinky. She, we have a, an episode that has been recorded, but not released yet. And she has some really great insights because she has a cafe that is adjacent to her coworking space, her initial coworking space. She bought the business after she had opened her coworking space. It is open to the public.

00:05:23 She loves the synergies, but they're totally different businesses. And she acknowledges in our podcast that it's a pretty steep learning curve. Jerry Alexander, who's also been on the podcast. You know, he talks about the same thing. They have a much larger location, actually, that may be a separate cut. There we go. Jerry Alexander, same thing in Scotland,

00:05:49 mix of restaurant car, a cafe bar and co-work space. The workspace is divided into a shared former courtroom and 10 different spaces. The mix has worked well for us. The food and Bev is run by our team, but I would agree with Eric Nugent, getting a good operator in is the easier option. So Eric, Jen, he is in Ohio.

00:06:12 He is actually comes from the bar and restaurant world. So he says, my story is similar. And Eric just went through our Coworking Startup School and his community managers and our Community Manager University history is similar, but reversed. We've operated six bar restaurants since 2010. And we are opening our first 7,500 square foot co-working space. The restaurant scene in the U S is currently challenging,

00:06:35 but what isn't, if I had your opportunity, I'd try to find a bustling popular bar with an eager and energetic operator, six to 10 miles away from your co-work location. I try to leverage their success brand and model and partner with them to expand into your new space. We have our own operations manual down to the nitty gritty employee handbooks, franchise docs,

00:06:55 and a rock solid partnership agreement that keeps operators operating and silent partners silent. I'll share any of it. If you find you need it, best of luck. So I love this group because there are people hiding out that will all of a sudden emerge when a topic comes up, that they have a lot to say about Jamie IMEs, who also went through our start-ups school and is in our Flight Group program.

00:07:19 I have seen operators who rent the bar area to an anchor tenant who runs it basically it's a member, but instead of renting an office or a desk you're renting the restaurant, I would think you would just need a more robust agreement with that kind of tenant, if it will impact your business, for instance, a longer term. So you don't have it empty or rotating.

00:07:38 Constantly love that. So thank you for that post super great question to talk to talk about and really fantastic responses. Thank you to all of our contributors. Our second question is from Maori silver. I love this question also. Hi there a question for spaces offering membership sharing between spouses or colleagues, how do you structure the shared membership? Do you increase the fee and what rules do you have for these types of memberships?

00:08:09 I am asking for a flex membership and not office shares. Thank you. We had nine responses to this one. So thank you to all of our contributors. This is such a hot topic right now. It used to be that sharing was out of the question. That's something we do. And then COVID, and now we have spouses who maybe you want to rotate being out of the home at the same time and they don't want completely separate memberships.

00:08:38 So this has been kind of really rethought. I think I shared on one of our earlier podcast recordings that I toured a space and was looking to office share, which is not what Maori is asking about. And the sharing of an office was no problem. I did not ask about flex memberships. So I think the office share is pretty clear, not an issue.

00:09:06 Here are the responses for the sharing of the flex packages. Carrie Diggle says we base our packages on hours and if they are from the same company, when they signed up, then they can share the hours of access to our facilitate facility. It's done with the fog and we can track the hours. And Maria Cecilia Santos popper says same here. Kelly,

00:09:29 see Hayes says, we offer a shared membership at no additional cost, but only one spouse can be here at a time. If both are here, one of them will have to do a day pass. We're small enough that it's easy to keep track of, but I don't think it would work in a bigger space only really if you can track. Right.

00:09:45 I think the big question is, are you okay with selling a bucket of hours and whoever use it uses it uses it. One thing I would keep in mind with the first response from Carrie Diggle, if they're from the same company, you know, they can share the hours. I would make sure you're charging an admin fee. If a company or even spouses are signing up because it's a lot of extra onboarding.

00:10:09 If folks are sharing a bucket of hours. And so it helps to cover the admin costs that it takes to onboard these folks. And then off-board them make those charges. Even if you know, folks rotate in and out of the pool, it is a lot to keep track of. And I think probably why most of us would have said, no thank you before COVID now there's so much demand for this type of use that we feel like,

00:10:34 you know, we want to need to support it. Just make sure you're charging for that extra flexibility that you're offering on against, depending on what membership they want to add an additional person or spouse, we will ask for an additional person fee. Exactly. I love that. I should pre-read that David Auris is how much is that additional person fee 25% and an office and $50 on a permanent desk in $25 for Coworking,

00:11:02 super helpful Jerome Chang, who is one of our group experts chimed in and said, we charge $25 a month for each shared user to your $50 for each additional additional desk. Super helpful. Great question. Very relevant right now. Lots of us are trying to figure out these details. Hey, I just wanted to jump in really quickly before we continue with our discussion.

00:11:29 If you're working on opening a coworking space, I want to invite you to join me for my free masterclass three behind the scenes secrets to opening a coworking space. If you're working on opening a coworking space, I want to share the three decisions that I've seen successful operators make when they're creating their Coworking business. The masterclass is totally free. It's about an hour and include some Q a.

00:11:53 If you'd like to join me, you can register at Everything. Coworking dot com forward slash masterclass. If you already have a coworking space, I want to make sure you know, about Community Manager, University, Community Manager, University is a training and development platform for community managers. And it can be for owner operators. It has content training resources, templates from day one to general manager.

00:12:20 The platform includes many courses that cover the major buckets of the Community Manager role from community management, operations, sales, and marketing, finance, and leadership. The content is laid out in a graduated learning path. So the Community Manager can identify what content is most relevant to them, depending on their experience and kind of jump in from there. We provide a live brand new training every single month for the Community Manager group.

00:12:48 We also host a live Q and a call every single month so that the community managers can work through any challenges that they're having or opportunities get ideas from other community managers build their own peer network. We also have a private slack group for the group. So if you're interested in learning more, you can go to Everything. Coworking dot com forward slash Community Manager.

00:13:14 Question number three, Danielle champagne, Noel, that is a gorgeous name posted looking for social media ideas who has the best social in Coworking that you have seen or post yours and I'll follow your pages. Social media is always a hot topic. This one got 54 comments. Facebook, the algorithm loved this one. So lots of shares on folks that like their social.

00:13:43 I do not see a lot of tips per se. Oh, I have to call out Brandon Houston made a comment. Wouldn't claim. It's the best, but here's ours. Granted, I have to call out your team and your Community Manager. Emily night at Collingwood Foundry. They are members of the Everything Coworking Community Manager University. And they're running a big promotion of local businesses in the month of must be February this month,

00:14:20 the whole month. It's fantastic. So every single day they promote another local business. They tag they've posted pictures. So Brandon said, thanks, Jamie. We started it last year as a way to show support to local businesses. It's been great to see all the businesses love all the business love going around. That's exactly what I've seen. One of their posts,

00:14:42 I think had 234 comments. So they're getting a ton of engagement. Their followers are growing, so there are multiple reasons to be doing it. So if you want to take a look at what they're doing there at Collingwood Foundry, yeah. That's where you can find their Instagram. So we have some community managers who are really good at social. We recently did a training.

00:15:10 So in the Community Manager University, there's a certification that you go through. And then it's basically a membership for ongoing professional development and community for community managers. And we did a couple months ago, a training on social media and really a strategic framework to use when you're planning your social media. Because if you listen to the podcast, this came up at our Flight Group too.

00:15:34 And I realized like I have a really strong bias around some things that you have to be really careful about how much time you invest in social, because probably your leads are not coming from social. Now, if you're in a small market like Collingwood, then it may be that you are trying to drive awareness of Coworking and that spending some committed time on a campaign,

00:16:00 like what they're doing to promote local businesses in February makes complete sense. So typically co-worker social media is not a like a search platform, right? It's an interruption platform. So you're sort of getting in front of people and creative ways to help people know that you are around. But if you look at your followers, it's probably a lot of other co-working spaces,

00:16:25 friends and family, your members, you have different constituencies that follow you on social media, right? So you have to make sure that your strategy and the time you spend on that content reflects your constituencies and that you can do some things to get some ROI out of your social. Like list-building trying to get email addresses because your email list is really where you can,

00:16:51 can have that one-on-one interaction and pull people through the, the, the funnel from awareness to joining. So anyway, I thought I would highlight that one. If you want to take a look at the post lots and lots of comments, I would call out the Collingwood Foundry. And again, just, you know, think about how your approach your strategy.

00:17:14 If you have a Community Manager and you want them to get some training on marketing, we have added a lot of marketing focused training in our Community Manager University program, including social media, how to create basically we teach a framework so that you can create your content in one sitting and schedule it out for the month, except for posts and reels and things like that.

00:17:37 They have to be done a little bit more on the fly. So thanks guys for a great Q and a session for this round. We'd love to see you in the Facebook group would love to feature your questions next time. Hey there, thanks for sticking with us through the end of the episode, don't forget to subscribe on your favorite podcast player. And if you were enjoying the podcast,

00:18:02 please go leave us a review. It helps other folks find the podcast who are thinking about starting a coworking space or already operating a coworking space and are looking to stay up to speed on tips and trends. And we started a YouTube channel. We'd love to have you catch us on video. You can join us for podcast, videos, and Q and a videos and other things that we post to the channel.

00:18:29 We'd love to see you there.

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